An example of the power of Google, and a reminder of such past incidents as when FB allows people living in the West Bank to indicate their country as Israel, or how the word "Palestine" does not appear on Google Maps, neither on Gaza (labelled the "Gaza Strip") or on the West Bank. By the way the building has now been renamed back to the Russell Senate Office Building; apparently the criticism got to them.

"With the possible exception of the U.S. military (including veterans and families), no group was more indebted to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) than the human rights community. Whether it was Russia, Ukraine, Egypt, Cuba, China or anywhere else on the planet, McCain understood that America must be the friend, protector and advocate of oppressed people." "He traveled the world to meet with dissidents, criticize dictators and support those struggling for freedom."

ISIS. Al Qaeda. Ukrainian neo-Nazis. Just "dissidents struggling for freedom" to John McCain. The picture they use for the article even pictures McCain with one of those odious, anti-Semitic neo-Nazis, Oleh Tyahnybok. Among his quotes: the Moscow-Jewish mafia ruling Ukraine

These are the people who were all over the news a month ago for allegedly training children to commit school shootings. But there was a curious lack of actual evidence accompanying those articles, and, surprise, a month later, the charges are vanishing.

The claim may be false (or it may be true), but if you read the Daily Caller article that Trump's claim is based on, it is hardly "unfounded". It has the same anonymous sourcing that countless stories in the Washington Post have. Amusingly, just 8 ½ hours after Trump made this claim, he sent out another tweet warning people that anything based on anonymous sources was “fiction”!

"The FBI has not found any evidence the (Clinton) servers were compromised,"

OK, but digging deeper: an FBI forensics agent…did not believe there was "any way of determining...100%" whether Clinton’s servers had been compromised, he felt "fairly confident that there wasn’t an intrusion." When asked whether a sophisticated foreign adversary was likely to be able to cover its tracks, he stated, "They could. Yeah.”

You read the headline thinking he’s saying his supporters will take up arms if Republicans lose. But no, he’s referring to…Congressional Democrats! “They will overturn everything that we’ve done and they’ll do it quickly and violently. And violently. There’s violence. When you look at antifa, and you look at some of these groups, these are violent people.”

Governor Cuomo supposedly favours Arctic conditions when making public appearances.

A 2015 study published in the journal Nature Climate Change found that most office buildings still set their temperatures based on men's metabolic rates. It concluded that the average comfortable level for men is about 72F, but women prefer a balmier 77.

Tuesday, August 28, 2018

On Google's suppression of non-mainstream news outlets

Trump is in the news today for complaining that Google searches for “Trump news” turns up only “fake news” from “left-wing” sites (in which he includes every single “mainstream” news source with the exception of FOX News!), and charging Google with suppressing news from conservative sources. Interestingly, moments after he tweeted that I went to Google and did just that (searched for “Trump news”); the very first result was from FOX News!

The corporate media generally just regurgitated his charge without examining it, or at best brought on a Google spokesperson to announce that there is no political bias in their search results. But, as often the case, in his bluster and lunacy, there was some truth in what Trump was saying (or tweeting). What no one in the mainstream media has yet bothered to note, either previously or today while covering this Trump tweet story, is that Google’s search results were changed back in April, 2017 in response to the “fake news / Russian meddling” brouhaha. Three months later one site, the World Socialist Web Site, documented in detail how that change had resulted in *substantial* decreases in traffic to left-wing and progressive sites.

I have my own personal data point on Google’s suppression of left-wing material which illustrates how profound this effect is. In 2009 I wrote an article on my blog entitled “Capitalism Ad Absurdam”, a phrase I invented AFAIK (complete with misspelling; it should be “absurdum” but I never took Latin). If you search for that phrase (with quotes around it to search for the exact phrase) on Google, you will find NO links to my article. None. No matter how many pages you search using the world’s most powerful search engine, you will not find my article, unless you already know it is on my site and do a site-specific search (site:lefti.blogspot.com “capitalism ad absurdam”). By contrast, the search engine DuckDuckGo turns up 5 links to the article (and only those 5 links, nothing irrelevant). The article is really there. Google just doesn’t want you to find it. It’s not just “de-ranked”. It’s completely, 100% suppressed.

Friday, August 24, 2018

Headlines for August 24, 2018

Click here to listen to this week's segment on Loud & Clear Radio.Headlines with an * are the ones we managed to fit in in our allotted 11 minutes.The segment has been off for two weeks so some of the headlines below are "old".

Worst and Most Misleading Headlines (WAMMH) -- August 24, 2018

CANDIDATES FOR “WORST”/”MOST DISGUSTING”:

*BY FAR THE WORST, THIS SEQUENCE OF THREE HEADLINES FROM BBC:

Israeli airstrikes ‘kill woman and baby’

Israeli airstrikes ‘kill woman and toddler’

[10 minutes later, after complaints from the Israeli Foreign Ministry and the “Board of Deputies of British Jews”]: Gaza airstrikes ‘kill woman and child’ after rockets hit Israel

The complaint: .@BBCWorld this is a formal complaint by @IsraelMFA .This title is a deliberate misrepresentation of reality ( that’s the polite equivalent of “ this is a LIE”, if you don’t get it). Israelis were targeted by Hamas and IDF acts to protect them.Change it IMMEDIATELY!!! @IsraelMFA

So many things to say:

The obvious, the implication that “rockets hitting Israel” (which killed no one) justifies killing the woman and her 1-year-old child

The omission of any trigger for the rockets hitting Israel, which, as noted in the article, was the unprovoked Israeli murder of two members of Hamas the day before.

The change from “Israeli” airstrikes, which properly identifies the perpetrator, to “Gaza” airstrikes, which obscures the perpetrator.

The change from “baby” to “toddler” (a proper description of a 1-year-old) to “child” (which could mean anyone up to perhaps 18 years old, and evokes far less response from the reader, even if it is technically accurate, just like “cops kill unarmed man” is technically accurate even if the really accurate headline was “cops kill unarmed Black man”. By the way the woman was also nine months pregnant, so “unborn child” could have been added to the headline.

The change of quote! If “woman and toddler” is an actual quote, you can’t just change it to “woman and child” on a whim! And if it is NOT an actual quote, it doesn’t belong in quotes.

The only way that the fact that the accused was undocumented would be significant would be if the motive for the murder was that she was about to turn him in to ICE. Otherwise, this kind of sensationalism, endemic to stories of this case, just feed Trump’s false stories about the dangers of undocumented immigrants.

And ironically:

Why Republicans can be accused of politicizing the Mollie Tibbetts tragedy

Actually Giuliani was making a serious point. He frames it as “he-said, she-said” where there are two different “truths”, but we see it all the time in other ways. For example, “Russians poisoned the Skripals”, treated as unchallenged truth by the media despite a complete lack of proof and only the most tenuous of circumstantial evidence.

Russia has the Pixel 3 XL and nothing's going to stop this leak train now

Of course it's not "Russia", it's Russian bloggers (and possibly hackers), who have gotten their hands on Google's new phone months ahead of anyone else and are leaking details. And the point here is that every technical person in Russia, capable of the most cutting edge type of stuff, does not work for the government.

From 2016 but still amusing — John Brennan voted for Gus Hall for President in 1976. "We've all had indiscretions in our past...I was neither Democratic or Republican, but it was my way, as I was going to college, of signaling my unhappiness with the system, and the need for change."

*The USMC would like you to know that being in armed combat is exactly like playing Super Smash Bros.

Friday, August 10, 2018

Headlines for Aug. 10, 2018 — The "lost episode"

This week's "Headlines" segment on Sputnik's Loud & Clear was pre-empted by a Russiagate segment, as Brian, John and I discuss the latest news about the Steele dossier and the role in played in launching the investigation. You'll have to content yourself with reading my notes below about the headlines we would have discussed if we had gone ahead with the normal segment.

Worst and Most Misleading Headlines (WAMMH) -- August 10, 2018

CANDIDATES FOR “WORST”/”MOST DISGUSTING”:

BY FAR THE WORST, THIS SEQUENCE OF THREE HEADLINES FROM BBC:

Israeli airstrikes ‘kill woman and baby’

Israeli airstrikes ‘kill woman and toddler’

[10 minutes later, after complaints from the Israeli Foreign Ministry and the “Board of Deputies of British Jews”]: Gaza airstrikes ‘kill woman and child’ after rockets hit Israel

The complaint for the Israeli Foreign Ministry: .@BBCWorld this is a formal complaint by @IsraelMFA .This title is a deliberate misrepresentation of reality ( that’s the polite equivalent of “ this is a LIE”, if you don’t get it). Israelis were targeted by Hamas and IDF acts to protect them.Change it IMMEDIATELY!!! @IsraelMFA

So many things to say:

The obvious, the implication that “rockets hitting Israel” (which killed no one) justifies killing the woman and her 1-year-old child

The omission of any trigger for the rockets hitting Israel, which, as noted in the article, was the unprovoked Israeli murder of two members of Hamas the day before.

The change from “Israeli” airstrikes, which properly identifies the perpetrator, to “Gaza” airstrikes, which obscures the perpetrator.

The change from “baby” to “toddler” (a proper description of a 1-year-old) to “child” (which could mean anyone up to perhaps 18 years old, and evokes far less response from the reader, even if it is technically accurate, just like “cops kill unarmed man” is technically accurate even if the really accurate headline was “cops kill unarmed Black man”. By the way the woman was also nine months pregnant, so “unborn child” could have been added to the headline.

The change of quote! If “woman and toddler” is an actual quote, you can’t just change it to “woman and child” on a whim! And if it is NOT an actual quote, it doesn’t belong in quotes.

“Alleged” attack? Also, if there was an attempted assassination of Donald Trump, try to guess the repercussions on Americans in terms of increased surveillance and lots more. Also, the first “expert” cited is from the Atlantic Council (discussed on Monday’s Loud & Clear).

"Mr. Maduro has weathered attempted rebellions, months of mass street protests, isolation from neighboring countries, threats of military intervention from President Trump, declining oil revenues, dissent within his own party, a mass exodus of his people and an election in May, widely described as rigged, that extended his term until 2025." Not included? US sanctions, or the boycott of the election by part of the opposition, which was the real story of the election, not alleged rigging.

And even worse: "While Mr. Maduro may not exactly fit the model of a military dictator". He was a BUS DRIVER and was ELECTED (twice). So yeah, "not exactly".

Most of what the author says is fine, e.g., "The best way to resist white supremacists is to massively outnumber them in a disciplined show of nonviolent force." and "Mobilizing a counter-rally needs to be backed by sustained organizing to seriously challenge racism and white supremacy in the United States." She also calls for "a mass gathering at a separate location", which I would disagree with. But regardless, it's the idea that the WaPo wants to tell people how to protest that just seems wrong.

“Vote fraud crusader”? He’s a vote SUPPRESSION crusader, pioneer of the “crosscheck” program which has illegally purged hundreds of thousands of people across the country. In April: “Kris Kobach has been found in contempt of court by a federal judge in Kansas. Trump’s Vote Thief-in-Chief has violated the rights of 36,000 Kansas citizens, taking away their right to vote on suspicion of being aliens. Every one is a U.S. citizen — and, not uncoincidentally, overwhelmingly Democratic leaning.” [https://www.kansascity.com/news/politics-government/article209268109.html ]

WaPo headline: North Korea has not taken steps to denuclearize, John Bolton says

SJ Mercury headline: North Korea has not taken steps to denuclearize, Bolton admits

The story is bad enough, not one word about the ACTUAL steps that DPRK has taken to denuclearize, not any mention of the fact that the agreement also calls for the *US* to take steps (toward normalizing relations). But the one word change in the SJ Mercury is significant. "Says" (WaPo) means thats what Bolton thinks, maybe its true, maybe not. "Admits" (SJMercury) says it is true, and that Bolton finally had to "admit" it.

And the reality, which comes in the form of a Bolton quote: “We’re going to continue to apply maximum pressure to North Korea until they denuclearize, just as we are to Iran.” No summit and no “agreement” was necessary if that’s the U.S. position, were they? “We squeeze you until you cry ‘uncle’” is not a “negotiation”!

CANDIDATES FOR “FUNNIEST”:

The USMC would like you to know that being in armed combat is exactly like playing Super Smash Bros.